On Tuesday, February 21st, Phi Delta Epsilon hosted a blood drive to support Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles (CHLA). To treat its patients, CHLA relies on blood donations from the public to meet its monthly quota of 1000 pints of blood. Typically, the hospital obtains around 800 pints of blood before the end of the month. However, to obtain its last 200 pints, CHLA purchases that blood from other sources, like the American Red Cross. Phi Delta Epsilon sought to help out, and, on February 21st, it did.

CHLA’s bloodmobiles parked on campus by the Matador Bookstore Complex

To help CHLA carry out its blood drive, the fraternity assisted the hospital in multiple ways. Before the event, Phi Delta Epsilon heavily advertised for the blood drive by posting flyers on campus and onto the Matador Information Network Displays, creating a Facebook event and having members invite friends. On the day of the event, members sporting CHLA’s “JUST DONATE IT” shirts helped out by instructing blood donors on how to complete their paperwork, stopping and asking passersby if they would be interested in donating blood and handing out water and snacks to donors. Overall, the fraternity made a strong effort to help CHLA.

Despite the blood drive closing more than 30 minutes before its scheduled ending time, CHLA and Phi Delta Epsilon managed to raise 61 bags of blood. Although this number is lower than previous blood drives, Vice President of Programming, Anita Shrivastava, is pleased but determined to do better. She says, “I believe we got a rather large number of bags considering Red Cross's blood mobile was on campus twice in the past two weeks. However it is not good enough for our standards, I believe we definitely could have gotten more bags of blood.” With that said, Phi Delta Epsilon plans to host another blood drive later this semester that’s bigger and better than this one was.

Thank you to everyone who came out and supported CHLA and Phi Delta Epsilon by donating blood!

Although our next blood drive’s date and time have yet to be finalized, some changes are already being considered to make it more successful. For example, we are considering offering donors incentives ranging from ice cream coupons to tickets to various sports games. Other changes include ending the blood drive after 3:00 PM, holding the event for two days instead of one and having more blood drawing stations so that more people can donate at a time. Stay tuned to the PhiDE website for more information on future blood drives and CHLA-related events!

This article was authored by Phi Delta Epsilon Technology Committee Member, Emma Collosi, and Technology Committee Chair, Ram Wolman. If you would like to contact Emma, you can reach her at emma.collosi.914@my.csun.edu. If you would like to contact Ram, you can reach him at ram.wolman.834@my.csun.edu.